Patrick Chovanec, a professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing, has an excellent roundup of the boondoggles besetting China—the kinds of boondoggles only top-down misinvestment can create (h/t Tyler Cowen). We’ve previously noted the problems with China’s solar energy sector, but we haven’t written much about their troubles with wind. Some of […]

The pension drama is beginning to disrupt American life in unexpected ways: it’s even hit professional football.Pensions are at the root of the ongoing NFL referee strike. NFL management noticed that more and more American companies are switching their employee retirement benefits from pensions to 401K’s en masse, so they decided to force top referees […]

A circuit judge in Dane County, Wisconsin has ruled that the state’s controversial law limiting public sector unions is unconstitutional. Previously in different cases the Wisconsin Supreme Court and a federal district court have largely upheld the law.It will take time for the lawyers to sort this one out. Is the Dane County judge, as […]

The presumptive next leader of China, Xi Jinping, has reappeared after a mysterious and unexplained two week’s absence from public view. As the New York Times reports, the Chinese media ran photos of Xi (pronounced ‘she’ as in ‘She who must be obeyed‘) on a visit to the China Agriculture University in Beijing. There has […]

Surprisingly, the energy revolution has been something of a no show in the presidential race so far. This is too bad. As the Economist‘s Lexington columnist notes, neither candidate has yet shown that he has a clear grasp of what U.S. energy policy should look like. Obama’s policies, in particular leave much to be desired: For the most part, […]

WRM’s book reviews for Foreign Affairs are now available. In this issue he took a look at: Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power, by Andrew Nagorski; Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, by Ross Douthat; The Lost Majority: Why the Future of Government Is Up for Grabs—and Who Will Take It, by […]

Coming in the middle of the American campaign season and timed to coincide with eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the violence now shaking the Middle East has inevitably turned into a US domestic issue. I’ll write about that as the situation unfolds, but at the moment it seems most important to think about what […]

Two months ago, Via Meadia looked at India’s plan to open up to foreign investment and wondered whether it would be bogged down interminably by politics like so many other Indian projects. Fortunately, it appears that the bill made it through the grinder on Friday, when it was announced that the reforms will be implemented, albeit […]

Xi Jinping, China’s next leader, is still missing, having been absent from the public eye for more than ten days. Beijing has been less than forthcoming about his whereabouts. The latest reports suggest that his absence is medical rather than political: Three sources close to the Chinese leadership familiar with internal accounts of Xi’s condition said the […]

The ‘recovery’ may be entering its third year, but America’s cities are still in recession.According to the National League of Cities, municipal revenues are set to fall for the sixth straight year in cities across America. On top of the regular pressures of reduced tax revenues from declining property values, overburdened, underfunded public pensions are failing […]